Lack of time is the most frequently-mentioned reason for failing to write a book, create a blog, or write a brand-building series of articles. Employees, as well as entrepreneurs, blame “lack of time” as the biggest obstacle holding them back.
Perceived lack of time is the most common reason for not writing a book, or engaging in other personal brand-building activities. But, is this a valid excuse?
Yet, each year, hundreds of thousands of new books are published, and new faces suddenly appear with strong, respected, brands on the social media landscape.
So, obviously some people have managed to find the time? What do they know that others don’t know? More important, how can you find the time to create your personal brand?
3 keys to brand building time management
In the course of interviewing hundreds of successfully published, and personally branded, authors of career-building nonfiction books, three lessons emerge over and over again.
- Daily progress. The vast majority of authors who have created strong personal brands work on their projects in short, daily, working sessions. They don’t suffer “deadline madness,” because each day they make consistent progress. This daily progress quickly adds up.
- Efficiency. Successfully-branded authors don’t “reinvent the wheel” each time they sit down to work. Instead, they know what they’re going to accomplish and they work as efficiently as possible. They have the tools and the system they need to get things done.
- Commitment. None of the hundreds of successfully branded authors I’ve interviewed enjoyed the luxury of 36-hour days or 8-day weeks. Everyone has the same amount of time; everyone has “day jobs” of one sort or another and everyone has family responsibilities. The only thing everyone doesn’t have is the commitment to recognize the urgency of personal branding and the discipline to make personal branding a priority in their daily lives.
Step 1: Commit to daily progress
One of the biggest misfortunes I had in college was the ability to turn out A quality work at the last minute. I was able to write term papers and my senior honors thesis at the last minute, and do the same for a couple of my close friends.
For a long time, I thought I was “beating the system.” Little did I know that I was seducing myself into complacency and learning bad habits that would take decades to unlearn.
Stress-filled, last-minute writing may work for term papers, but it simply doesn’t work for personal branding. Personal brands are built incrementally, a couple of pages at a time, or a couple of decisions at a time.
The best personal brands are built incrementally, based on consistent daily progress.
Now, I write to a different drummer–the same drummer that established writers follow.
Books and personal brands are created in daily working sessions as short as 30 minutes, and only rarely more than an hour a day. This is the formula that successful writers since the time of Cicero have follow.
Nulla dies sine linea – never a day without a line. (from The Essential Don Murray)
Build your day around your brand building
The biggest step an author or personal brander can take is to commit to daily progress on your project, then build your day around your writing.
The easiest way to do this is to create an online calendar–like the free calendar that Google offers–and schedule your week days around your daily brand-building working sessions.
But, don’t make the mistake of making this a personal online calendar, offer access to your co-workers and your family. Get their buy-in as early as possible! Explain to your family and co-workers why you need their support, and how they’ll eventually benefit.
Once your family and co-workers understand that you are not going to be available for calls or meetings during certain times each day, they’ll respect your commitment.
Tips for setting up your online calendar:
- Use the calendar’s “repeat” and “until” features. This way, your working sessions will automatically appear each day in the weeks and months that come.
- Schedule a short review session each evening. Use this time to review each day’s progress and identify what you want to accomplish the next day. These 15 to 30-minute sessions keep your brain engaged and prime it for progress while you’re sleeping.
- Leave your weekends free. There are no rewards for martyrdom. Work hard during the week, and–when you feel like it–invest time on the weekends. But, give yourself time to recharge your batteries.
- Start your week late Sunday night. Review what you want to accomplish on Monday, as well as each of the following days.
Step 2: Work as efficiently as possible
Avoid working harder than you have to, and avoid spending more time than you have to.
Readers don’t care how hard you worked, or how much time you spend on your personal branding projects. Readers only care about how you can help them solve their problems or achieve their goals.
Efficiency runs the gamut from big decisions to small working habits.
“Big” efficiency decisions involve answering questions like:
- How big does a book have to be to brand me as an expert in my field? Do I have to write a traditional 250-page book, or would a shorter book of tips that appeared a year earlier be more helpful to my career?
- Do I have to write every word myself? Or, could I “crowd-source” my book, work with a co-author, or hire a ghostwriter?
- Do I really need a “big name” publisher? Or, could and should I self-publish?
“Small” efficiency decisions involve:
- Do I know as much as I need to know about the writing tools built into Microsoft Word? Do I know how to automatically insert frequently used phrases, apply text styles, count the words, and check for common grammar mistakes?
- Should I work with a mind mapping software program? Mind mapping software programs, like Mindjet’s MindManager, make it easy to analyze your market’s needs, create content and marketing plans, schedule your time, track your progress, and identify back-end products and services.
Step 3: Commit to discipline and the right habits
Recognition that successful authors write as efficiently as possible in short daily working sessions doesn’t do a thing to advance your personal branding goals.
The only way you can break out of the “undifferentiated multitude” of other qualified individuals competing for your jobs and your clients is to commit to applying the formulas that work to your specific circumstances.
Taking action by committing to daily progress–even relatively small steps each day–and continuing to take action is the best way you can take control of your career and your future.
Think about Keith Rosen. Keith is the author of Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions: A Tactical Playbook for Managers and Executives.
Keith had a lot on his plate as he was writing his book. He was a nationally-recognized executive coach, his wife was pregnant, and he had numerous other family responsibilities. He could, legitimately, have asked for a deadline extension.
Instead, he got up every morning at 5:30 and went into a unheated room to work on his book. That’s the spirit that drives personal branding success!
Author:
Roger C. Parker is a “32 Million Dollar Author,” book coach, and online writing resource. His 38 books have sold 1.9 million copies in 35 languages around the world. The NY Times called his Looking Good in Print “…the one to buy when you’re buying only one!” Roger has interviewed hundreds of successfully branded authors and shares what he’s learned at Published & Profitable and his daily writing tips blog.
Related posts:
- Are You Writing a Book to Build Your Personal Brand? If you’re not writing a book to build your...
- 6 Time Saving Ways to Write a Brand Building Book The benefits of writing a book to build your...
- One Sheets Can Market Your Book and Build Your Brand One sheets are a powerful marketing tool for you...
(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)
Loading ...
Great post Roger.The explosion in social media makes personal branding more important than ever. You not only need to build it, you need to protect it. Be sure to secure your branded username at as many social media sites that offer a branded vanity URL as possible. This also can be time consuming. Http://namechk.com is a simple tool I created to help people keep track of where they have registered a username and where they still need to. I hope it helps your readers.
Dear David:
Thank you for commenting and stressing the importance of working as efficiently as possible when promoting your brand. I look forward to checking out your http://namechk.com tool.
Best wishes on your continued success.
Roger
Your message is right on. I always tell people to spend time every day — even if it is 15 mintutes — to get exposure for themselves (brand) among people in their target segments. Great info, as usual, Brian
Dear Brian:
Thank you for your kind words. Coming from you, your words are especially appreciated.
I encourage everyone to check out Brian Jud’s Book Marketing Works website, http://bookmarketingworks.com/. Brian’s emphasis on special sales has boosted the profitability of 10’s of thousands of authors.
Roger
Roger, love that you talk about “personal” branding. The best branding is personal. Too many writers think they should brand the title of their books. That doesn’t even work for Stephen King. Though his books are mostly horror, what happens when “On Writing” comes along?
I just published a new book for retailers, A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotion (www.budurl.com/RetailersGuide)+-++++++++. In it I suggest that one of the ways independent retailers can set themselves apart from big box is with “personal” branding. And, of course–true to my little teacher-self–I give really practical ways of how to do that.
So, hooray for you. I love coming by to your blog.
Best,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Tweeting writing tips at http://www.twitter.com/FrugalBookPromo
Dear Carolyn:
Thank you for your kind words. Your “frugal” information is always inspiring, and usually creates anything-but-frugal profits.
Our recent Published & Profitable interview was one of the year’s best. Sight unseen, I know that your Retailer’s Guide will be a valuable resource, as are your other books in the Frugal series.
Roger
Roger, my favorite of three is a little progress each day. It truly made a difference to set a aside a segment of time 30-45 minutes, every day at the same time. Any amount of time will work but the same time was real important to me. Write on.
Dear Peter:
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I appreciate your confirmation of the “same time each day” tip.
As Mark Victor Hansen, and others, have stressed: “Success is a habit.”
Best wishes on your continued success.
Roger
Love your thoughts on personal branding. In our work to help authors, speakers and experts establish their brand identity the key word is “consistency”. The activities, habits, choices, strategies, language, colors, and images used when creating your personal brand must be consistent through everything you create. If your market gets confused at all about who you are, what you are and what you have to offer, your brand needs help… AND you lose momentum. Whatever you choose as your brand definition it MUST be consistent, consistent, consistent!
Dear Hobie:
How nice to reconnect with you! Thank you for taking the time to comment.
I love your emphasis on “Hobie’s 3-Rules of Branding;” consistent, consistent, & consistent.
I also like your including “habits” as one of the first “consistencies.”
Best wishes.
Roger
[...] here: 3 Ways to Find the Time to Build Your Personal Brand | Personal … Share and [...]
Great post, Roger. I like the way you utilise formal marketing techniques to book promotion — something that seems so obvious and is so rarely utilised (even by publishers). You might like to check out my tongue in cheek (only a little bit) look at a book’s lifecycle (poetry book in particular, which probably has a shorter lifecycle than most): http://magdalenaball.blogspot.com/2009/11/books-lifecycle.html
Dear Magdalena:
Thank you for taking the time to comment and your supportive words.
I really like what you wrote on book product lifecycle, http://magdalenaball.blogspot.com/2009/11/books-lifecycle.html, and the depth of your reviews at The Compulsive Reader, http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/.
Best wishes on your continued success.
Roger
Best wishes.
Roger
Roger raises very salient points about the craft of writing; all successful writers, regardless of whether they are writing fiction, non-fiction, or both, have the discipline to stare at a blank computer screen or piece of paper and commit to the process of filling it. This can be exhilarating as well as terrifying, but to go beyond the craft and to aspire to creating “art” with one’s words, it is a necessary sacrifice every serious writer must make.
Many people talk about being writers or wanting to write, and a lot of folks think they can write, but at the end of the day, long-term dedicated devotion to the process is what produces results, builds a meaningful “personal brand,” and leads to a sense of real accomplishment.
Dear Jonathan:
Thank you for your supportive and, obviously, experienced comments. I especially liked your words, “exhilarating as well as terrifying.”
I encourage others to follow Jonathan’s link to a very learned and well-written blog.
Roger
As a student of Roger C. Parker’s Published and Profitable program, I am always amazed how he breaks problems or opportunities down into simple and actionable steps. He envisions the whole picture and breaks things down to “what do I do first, second, etc.” Simply said, Roger removes the mystery and any hint of procrastination from accomplishing ones goal or mission. If you want to accomplish writing and publishing a book, Roger can take you through “mapping”, detailing, planning, execution and final product. One of the many great things about this “master” is his unselfish attention to helping others become successful. Roger has a way of following up helping others implement and track their progress without any intimidation or feeling of guilt. In summary, he instills confidence and an attitude that “YOU CAN DO IT”….This includes building your Personal Brand. A true and gifted master!
Dear Ron:
What kind words; thank you. I am really touched.
The effectiveness of a book coach, of course, is limited by the willingness of their students to take action in a disciplined way. So, you should give yourself a pat on the back, too, for your track record of committing to mastering new skills and incorporating the opinions of others into your daily operating system.
Thanks again, Ron!
Roger
I read somewhere that we tend to overestimate how much can be done in a single day, but greatly underestimate how much can be accomplished in a year. As one who also picked up the bad habit of writing at the last minute in college and grad school, I appreciate the message of using daily worksessions. I also find your recommendation to use the technique of mindmapping to be quite helpful.
Hello, Curtis:
Thank you for commenting; if you run across where you read the “overestimate day/underestimate year,” I’d love to know the reference source.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who picked up the habit of last minute writing at college; maybe we should start a support group. g)
Thanks again for your comment.
Roger